Month / December 2005

Friday December 30 $12 9:30PM! rootsAdrienne Young and Little Sadie
Adrienne Young is a seventh-generation native of Florida, born in Tallahassee and raised near Clearwater. She formed a jazz band at age 18 and toured within Florida but moved to Nashville to study at Belmont University and to surround herself with songwriters. In Nashville, she formed the duo Liters of Pop and played Nashville’s club scene, in addition to performing solo acoustic shows. While working as a temp, often on Nashville’s Music Row, she gathered enough money to start working on demos, which evolved into her debut album, Plow to the End of the Row. Each package included an envelope of wildflower seeds — a creative move that helped it earn a Grammy nomination for best recording package. She also won the Chris Austin songwriting competition at MerleFest 2003 in the bluegrass category. Her winning entry, “Sadie’s Song,” reconstructs the story of Little Sadie, the subject of a well-known bluegrass standard.

After finishing the first version of Plow to the End of the Row, Young formed a backing band, known as Little Sadie, and re-recorded the album with them. She released the album on her own label, AddieBelle Records and has appeared as a guest on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. In 2005, she issued The Art of Virtue, also on her own label.

Washington’s favorite bad boys, the Nighthawks are masters of electric Chicago Blues and the kings of sh*t kicking roadhouse rock. They’re not called America’s Best Bar Band for nothing…

The Nighthawks history is extensive, beginning in the ’70s when the band criss-crossed the country playing clubs and colleges then dominated by the sounds of country rock and disco. The band spread their version of roots rock, soul, rockabilly, and blues that was hardly the standard fare. In addition, the Nighthawks were considered touring pioneers, since only a handful of Chicago blues stars were touring nationally, and the west coast blues bands stayed on their side of the Great Divide.

In the 60’s Joe Tripplet was in the DC band The Hangmen and became a member of the counterculture band Claude Jones with Happy Acosta and Jay Sprague. That band shared a farm out in Warrenton with Grin and I’m sure that there are many tales of life on the farm from that amalgalm. Joe and Happy began performing as an acoustic duet calling themselves The Rosslyn Mt. Boys (RMB from here out) around 1971. In 1972 Peter Bonta joined the Nighthawks as their keyboard player. The Hawks have always been a roots oriented band not limiting themselves to straight blues and Peter was able to do some countryish numbers ala Charlie Rich with that band. In 1973 the RMB made a decision to go electric and invited Peter to come on board as bass player along with Bob Berberich on drums from Grin. When Jay Sprague also came aboard from Claude Jones, Peter was able to move over to keyboards and guitar. Add Tommy Hannum on pedal steel who had been working with Emmy Lou Harris in her days around DC and the RMB were set. The RMB predated the Flying Burrito Brothers and both followed the trail blazed by the Byrds. If the RMB had been west coast based like the Burritos, they may have broken through to a universal recognition. Even though they only toured on a mid-Atlantic circuit, their first album “The Rosslyn Mt. Boys” released in 1977 on Gene Rosenthal’s Adelphi label sold over 50,000 copies. They opened for and backed up stars like Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn and Buck Owens. One of Peter’s favorite memories is backing up Doug Sahm for a three day gig at DC’s famed Cellar Door. The RMB called it quits in 1979 and the members went in various directions. Peter was a member of Artful Dodger before opening his Wally Cleaver Studios in Fredericksburg, Tommy Hannum relocated to Nashville and has been working with Ricky van Shelton for a good while and Rico Petrocelli went on to work with Mary Chapin Carpenter. (Right On Rhythm)